Eight Hundred Grapes (9 page)

I moved down the hall. There was a soft light coming from Bobby’s room. Margaret and Bobby in there together—reading, talking softly. They didn’t look unhappy. They looked comfortable.

That left my parents’ bedroom. The door was wide open. The door was never wide open when we were children—the bedroom was my parents’ sacred space, none of us daring to enter.

My mother was already in bed, her curls swept back off her face. Her radio was playing softly—a twin on either side of her, both of them sleeping. She put her finger to her mouth. “Whisper,” she said. “And tell me you have wine in that mug.”

“No, hot water and lemon. Do you want a little?”

“Only if the hot water and lemon magically turns into wine.”

I nodded and took a seat on the edge of the bed, motioning to the twins. “Are they sleeping with you?”

“They are sleeping with me,” she said. Her voice low, like in demonstration.

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. In a long, unruly day, this was the nicest thing she could do. My mother was acting exactly like my mother. Bossy, serious. It made me feel calm. So why did I decide to reward her by being mean?

“No Henry tonight?” I said.

She smiled, giving me a look that said it wasn’t okay and, also, that she forgave me. “No. Not tonight. He’s in rehearsals.”

“Good for him.”

“Good for San Francisco, actually,” she said. “Henry is one of the most beloved conductors in the world. He ran the New York Philharmonic, and was chief conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic before that. He has changed the template for what an American orchestra can be.”

“That sounds like an exaggeration.”

“It’s an understatement. He’s mentored scores of prominent musicians. And he’s brought contemporary American music back into vogue in this country. You should look up his bio on Wikipedia. Don’t take my word for it.”

I nodded in a way that said I’d get right on learning all I could about Henry. If
get right on it
meant never.

She paused, deciding how to shift gears. “Your fiancé called me,” she said.

I nodded. “That seems to be what he’s doing today,” I said.

“He’s very torn up.” She shook her head. “I told him it was between the two of you. That I loved him, but I love you more and I support whatever you decide together.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“I did tell him not to call your father, though.” She shrugged. “I doubt your father will think it’s between the two of you.”

I knew she was right. My father would be furious at Ben, not for keeping the kid from me, but for getting himself into that situation in the first place, for not being responsible enough to stop it.

“Dad tells me you paid a little visit to Jacob McCarthy today,” my mother said.

“He knows?”

“Of course he knows. Jacob called him as soon as you left there.”

Jacob was a tattletale—why did that surprise me? Of course he was. The man lived on licorice.

“He wanted to make sure Dad wasn’t having second thoughts,” she said.

I perked up, hopeful that my father was going to see the error of what he was doing, just by being asked. Maybe Jacob’s call would trigger a new conclusion. One where Jacob moved the hell away.

“He’s not having second thoughts. This is what he wants. What we both want.”

“Then why were you avoiding me today?”

“I had a feeling you weren’t in the mood to be pleasant,” she said.

“I don’t like Jacob, Mom. I have a bad feeling about what’s going to happen to our vineyard, to everything Dad worked so hard for, that you both have.”

“Fine, but do you actually think you’re going to change your father’s mind?”

“No. I’m just hoping he’ll at least wait until he’s in a position to make a better decision, one that he’s not making under duress.”

She laughed. “He’s not under duress.”

“Does he know about Henry?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Then he’s under duress.”

She sighed, but she didn’t look hurt. She looked like she wanted to hear me. She looked like she wanted to be on the same side, as opposed to opposite ones, so we could get to the conversation she wanted to have, the one about Ben.

“Darling, we’re supposed to sit down with the caterer . . .” she said.
“Should I cancel that? It’s not about the deposit, though if we don’t sit down with her, she is going to take that. She needs a final head count. She needs a final decision on the entrée.”

“Mom, I can’t really deal with that right now.”

“I told her we’re going with the fish,” she said.

I looked at her, confused.

“I’m sorry, did you cancel the wedding and forget to tell me?” she asked.

“No.”

“Well, I think that means part of you doesn’t want to cancel.”

“What about the other part?”

My mother looked me right in the eye. “If you want to fix things, you have to start somewhere,” she said. “For you that somewhere is fish.”

I interrupted her. “Do you remember when Finn snuck out of the house on his fifteenth birthday and hitchhiked to Los Angeles to go to a Phish concert?”

“It was his sixteenth birthday. And of course.”

Her face went dark even remembering it. Finn ended up at a downtown Los Angeles police station, my parents driving five hundred miles in the middle of the night to pick him up. “Why are you bringing that up?”

“Because Bobby and I were the ones that you were mad at. Even though I was thirteen.”

“Fourteen. And I seem to remember that you took it upon yourself to drive to the Queens’ harvest party while we were gone.”

“You were late, how else was I going to get there?”

“Very funny.” She was less than amused, just remembering how I’d
borrowed
her car, driven up the road to the party. “I think we’re getting a little off track.”

“You grounded both of us, as long as you grounded Finn. Do you remember why you made that decision?”

“Apparently you do.”

“You said Finn wanted to go so badly that he wasn’t thinking clearly. But we knew how dangerous it was and we didn’t stop him, or tell you and Dad so you could stop him. And you said that was unacceptable.
Because that’s what we do for the people we love. We don’t sit around watching while they make mistakes. We at least try to stop them from doing things we know they are going to regret.”

“You realize I was talking about children as opposed to grown people?”

“Do the same principles not apply?”

She nodded. “I guess they do.”

Then she took my hand and put it to her face. Josh and Peter squirmed beside her, curling in against her legs.

“So that’s what you’re trying to do?” my mother said. “Stop the people you love from doing what they’ll regret?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

She kissed the inside of my palm. “But which way is regret?”

Sebastopol, California. 1984

T
he baby was crying.

All the children were crying. They wouldn’t stop. He could hear them from the bedroom, Jen trying to soothe them. He wanted to get up and help her, but she had ordered him away. He had worked all night and was heading back to the vineyard soon. The clock read 10
A.M.
He needed to sleep for at least an hour or two.

He was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. They had three children and they were going bankrupt trying to make this vineyard work. After that first vintage—when he thought he had the hang of it, that one lovely wine giving him a false sense of security—he realized he didn’t have a handle on anything. The weather wasn’t cooperating: two years of storms, one year of no storms at all. Three children.

Sebastopol was changing, diversifying, but it wasn’t becoming a wine haven. And there was a man who wanted to buy the land back from him and turn it into a subdivision: McMansions on McMansions, ten of them, one acre of land each.

Dan didn’t want to think about doing it, but he had to think about doing it. He had given himself five years, five vintages. If he sold the vineyard now, they could get out without losing everything. He would come out ahead. But even one more bad harvest, and he would be borrowing against what he had already borrowed.

He wasn’t going to do that, not to his wife, not to his kids. The boys
fighting, always fighting. If they moved back into the city, they would still fight, but he would be around less to hear it. And maybe they would cry less. That was possible too.

He looked up to find Jen in the doorway, the baby in her arms, sleeping. Jen smiled at the small victory. He smiled back at her. He loved her so much he thought it might break him.

“Hey there, baby,” she said.

Jen came over and lay down next to him, putting their daughter between them. Jen had put her in a blue dress. Her legs stuck out beneath it, chunky and sweet. The baby was a mix of both of them. Bobby had been a spitting image of Jen, Finn of him. But this one, their daughter, on any given day, looked like both of them. And neither of them.

He put the baby on his chest, reaching for Jen’s hand. “You okay?” he said.

She sighed. “I gave up,” she said. “I gave the kids a bag of cookies.”

“That was smart of you,” he said.

“Each. Each their own bag.”

He smiled, looked at her.

“Did you sleep at all?”

“Yes.” He nodded, meeting her eyes, so she wouldn’t worry.

“Liar.”

She closed her eyes, about to fall asleep herself.

“We need to take the offer,” he said.

She opened her eyes.

“I can get my job back at the university,” he said. “I just got off the phone with Bill and he said they’d be glad to have me. And the real estate agent can get our money out of this. She knows a guy who’s interested.”

“That’s what you’ve been doing instead of sleeping? Making that decision?”

“That’s what I’ve been doing.”

She paused, and he could see her relax. They would move to San Francisco. She could get a job as a studio musician. They could have salaries and buy the purple Victorian home they’d driven past in Pacific Heights. They could get help with the kids.

She looked at him and smiled. He loved that smile, and was willing to move mountains when it appeared. He had made it appear now by giving them both a break, by giving them a way to turn it around.

Then her smile disappeared on him. “Did you call anyone else?”

“What?”

“Did you call anyone besides Bill? To tell him the plan?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Why do you ask?”

She moved closer to him for a second, one hand on him, one on her baby. Then she stood up, leaving the baby with him, sleeping quietly on his chest.

“I’m just trying to figure out who I need to call back.”

He looked at her, confused.

“To tell that we’re staying.”

The View from 8
A.M.
, the Last Sunday of the Harvest

T
his was what I dreamed. I was getting married under the Eiffel Tower. The sun was coming up over Paris. Ben was by my side, wearing a green suit, smiling. It didn’t feel like a dream because of that suit, which we’d bought together at a flea market in South Pasadena shortly after Ben moved to Los Angeles. The pea-green suit was intoxicating to him. He wore it every chance he had, so it added a verisimilitude to the dream to see him in it. It actually felt like we were getting married, the two of us reading our vows. But when it was time for Ben to put the ring on my finger, he threw it toward the tower’s iron stairs, the ring landing somewhere high in the tower. “Go!” he said.

We ran toward the ring and the stairs. Ben started to climb, before I even reached the staircase. He was climbing the first of three hundred stairs, which would take him from the ground floor to the first level, the second three hundred stairs, which would take him from the first level to the second. He explained this mid-run so I’d understand where he wanted to go, even if he didn’t want to explain why.

Just as I got to the base of the tower, I got drenched. I woke up to find my father and Finn standing over my bed. Finn was spraying me with water from my mother’s self-created spray bottle, which she used to water her vegetables.

“What the hell?”

“I could ask you that,” Finn said.

“You guys scared the crap out of me,” I said.

My father smiled. “Mission accomplished. Let’s go.”

“Where to?”

“The Tasting Room,” Finn said.

He pulled up the window shade and bright light streamed in. I tried to cover my eyes but it was no use.

My father motioned toward the back of my closet door, where my wedding dress was hanging, clean and hemmed. My mother must have done her handiwork while I was sleeping so it would be the first thing I’d see when I woke up.

He nodded. “Pretty,” he said.

I ignored that, sitting up. “Why are we going to The Tasting Room at eight
A.M.
?”

“Why are you still sleeping at eight
A.M.
?” he said. “Is that what corporate lawyers do these days?”

My father had been up for five hours already. He had already had breakfast and lunch. It was time for a drink.

“Don’t you know what today is?” Finn said.

It was Sunday, the last Sunday of the harvest. Five days until the weekend of my wedding.

I deserved more than water on my face to wake me up. Had I forgotten everything that mattered around here? There was an order to things during the last weekend of the harvest.

The official kick-off was the Sunday morning winemaker’s tasting, when my father opened the previous year’s vintage for the first time, sharing it with local winemakers. Tonight, we had family dinner in the wine cave. Then, on Tuesday night, we had the ultimate celebration: the harvest party.

Most years, the harvest party was the following Saturday night—the weekend after the harvest ended—but this year they had changed the plan. They had changed the plan because the next Saturday night they were supposed to be at my wedding.

“Let’s go!” my father said. “Get out of bed.”

“Can you guys just give me a few minutes?”

“No,” my father said.

“You should pretend she didn’t ask that, Pop,” Finn said.